5 Transferable Skills For Public Health Students

As a public health student, you can develop so many different advantageous skill sets. Nonetheless, there are some transferable skills that can be key in helping students excel in their public health careers.

Depending on your career path, you may find that other skills not mentioned in this article are more important. However, there are sure to be skills here that you can intentionally apply into your life. By being able to identify experiences where you can highlight the skills below in interviews and other setting can help you progress in your early career.Be sure to also check out:

Be Sure To Also Check Out:

• 5 Transferable Skills For Public Health Students Part 2
• 5 Transferable Skills For Public Health Students Part 3

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(Related: Career Chat With The Public Health Millennial)

1. Networking

Networking I wouldn’t traditionally consider a skill. However, given everything going on with the job market today it has to go on this list.

The importance of networking has become greatly more apparent over the last couple months. With COVID-19 shaking up the job market, it has become even more vital to make important connections in your public health journey. Whether you are connecting with peers, other students, professors, preceptors or whoever – make sure that you always put your best foot forward. You will want to develop a deep network that you can leverage for jobs, advice and insights.

You are more likely to land hard to get opportunities if you already have a connection with someone at the organization. Create opportunities and your own luck through making meaningful connections. When networking ensure that you are giving more than you are asking!

Here are some resources for networking:

• The Introverts Guide to Networking
• Tim Ferris | How to Network
• How To Hack Networking | David Burkus | TEDxUniversityofNevada

2. Needs Assessments

Needs assessments are vital parts to public health practice. How do we help communities if we don’t know their needs? In order to know communities weaknesses, strengthens, gaps and opportunities is the only way to get real community change. As public health professionals we have to engage communities and meet them where they are at.

Being able to do needs assessments or some aspect of them can be transferred to so many different roles in public health. Gaining this skill will allow you to apply it in various context. Even if you don’t know how to do an entire needs assessment, there are some skills like focus groups and survey development that can be beneficial in your career.

Here are some resources for Needs Assessments:

• Community Toolbox – Assessing Community Needs and Resources
• Learning Space Tool Kit on Needs Assessments
• CDC Community Health Assessments & Health Improvement Plans

3. Data Management & Analysis

Data management is a skill that can help your job prospects in many fields of public health. Additionally, data analysis AKA making sense of the data is what we public health professionals have to get comfortable speaking about. Our interpretation of data as public health professionals is a skillset that can be used in so many industries inside and outside of public health.

There are varied levels of data management depending on what you do in public health. You can be using excel, online databases, R, SPSS, SAS, GIS, and other databases. I can’t be too specific here on data management because it truly depends on what you want to do in public health before i can advise which part of it is important. When you are thinking about data analysis – you have to think about who is your audience and what data is most important to communicate. Data is not something that the general public is familiar with so this should be a primary consideration when analyzing and interpreting data.

• CDC Epidemiology Field Guide | Using Technologies For Data Collection and Management
• NCVHS | Toolkit For Communities Using Health Data

4. Report Writing

Being able to write reports or do technical writing is a must have skill for many public health career paths. One thing I think many MPH programs lack is differentiating between research writing and report writing. Though they are similar, you will need to know that how you write a research paper is not how organizations are going to want to write reports.

A great way to gain this report writing skill is to start reading more Community Health Needs Assessments and other technical documents. You can also ask for more of this work in your internship or be sure to be intentional in your technical writing in classes that can be translated to real-world situations.

Here are some resources for Report Writing:

• Public Health Org – Writing Guide
• Vital Strategies – Communicating with Data: A Guide to Writing Public Health Reports
• ASPPH – Public Health Reporting Writing Teaching Strategies (full report)

5. Collaboration

I know group projects can be some of the most frustrating parts of your public health journey. However, these projects should be used as a great learning experience for how you can work around challenging interpersonal skills. Is someone being hard to reach and not active in meetings? Well you know this may still happen in your career – so instead of complaining, you should try to focus on developing techniques to get the most out of these.

Public health is a collaborative field. The earlier you are able to know how to work with people – as difficult as it may be sometimes – the better of you will be in your career. Try to develop a collaborative approach to solving problems. Seek out experiences where you can work with people with different skillsets and knowledge bases.

Though there will be times when you will have to work independently, a large portion of work you’ll do in your career will consist of collaboration in one way or another.

Here are resources to better collaborate:

• TedxSantaCruz | Cultivating Collaboration: Don’t Be So Defensive! | Jim Tamm
• Harvard Business Review | How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote

Summary

Wherever in your career you are, being able to develop skills that you can use to leverage successes in your career is important. As an early professional, now more than ever you have to develop transferable skills and get experiences that set you apart. This article outlined five transferable public health skills that can be used to better develop ones professional self. Five transferable skills that all public health students can gain and build on in their early careers are:

1. Networking
2. Needs Assessments
3. Data Management & Analysis
4. Report Writing
5. Collaboration

What transferable skill are you finding most helpful for your public health career?